From: Paul Tyerman <ptyerman at ozemail.com.au> on 2004.02.18 at 00:07:44(11171)>
>Maybe a letter from your lawyer, on his/her letterhead might do
>something...that is, if you can locate the seller's address. Or,
>maybe a comment on the seller's rating list?
>

Marge,

That is a pretty good idea. I reckon if someone started putting a bad
comment on each time an image was stolen from their site they'd learn
pretty quickly that it didn't pay to steal images from a particular site.
It mightn't sound much but if it was done each time an image was stolen it
would mount up after a while (better yet if whoever it was stolen from had
time to put a bad feedback up for each image every day then they'd really
mount up. Sooner or later the summary for that particular person would
start to have a lot of bad feedback in it (i.e the number of negative
feedback would rise, which is generally the main way people see whether
someone is worthwhile dealing with or not).

One thing I would suggest though is that if someone WERE going to do this
they set up a specific ID on ebay to do this, so that if ebay decided to
delete it for doing it then your main ID wouldn't be affected. Definitely
an interesting work around. It might even be worthwhile asking ebay
management (from the specific ID, not the main one) whether it was OK to do
it as the person was stealing images from you. They may do nothing about
the stealing of images, but they might just allow that as it doesn't mean
that ebay themselves have to actually do anything about it?

Definitely an interesting idea, that is for sure. Frustrating when people
steal images as a few of us on one of the bulb image lists found out
recently when it was found that a site was taking the images from that site
and cropping them to remove the copyright watermark if there was one. That
to me was the real insult as it means they were deliberatly trying to hide
the fact they had stolen them and really couldn't claim any more that it
was "accidental". They did something when it was brought to the lists
attention and a whole bunch of people asked them to remove the offending
images. They honestly may not have realised that they were taken from
other sites as they had their new site developed by outsiders, and I must
at least commend them that they DID remove all the offending images quickly
once it was brought to their attention. This is the same sort of thing
except that it is a bit more difficult as it sort of falls between the host
ebay and the people themselves. That is why I think a feedback remark for
every picture that is stolen is such a good idea.